Wednesday, October 01, 2008

More Man with No Name art

That's a weird pose to take, isn't it? He looks like he's sort of prancing. And his sarape looks way too long and flow-y. Its size and the way it's been rendered obfuscates any strong pose the underlying body might have.

Here I find two problems. The first is panel 3. Clint's hat looks perched on his head. Look how far away it is from his ears. Just look at his whole head in relationship to the hat. It looks silly.

The second problem is the guns. Most of their anatomy is handled well, but they frequently break down in the grip. It's most obvious in panel 4. Here's a picture of a Colt SAA:

Note how far the grip extends away from the body of the gun compared with the depiction in panel 4 above. Check out panel 3 as well: the grip appears to line up perfectly with the tip of the hammer.

Kudos to the artist (Wellington Dias?) for getting the rest of the gun right, but take a look at your reference for that grip.

I hadn't even noticed the font, but now that you've drawn my attention, a good typographer would have edited it to maker it classier, wouldn't they? The flourishes coming off the Ns ("lobster antennae," I like to call 'em) should have been clipped or adjusted to make the choice look less like "hey look at this free font I found."

As for the mentality, kinda seems like it. Since I haven't read it, I can't judge the writing, but for a license of that magnitude, I would wish for something with higher production values in the visual department at least.

Ya. The funny thing is that the font is called bleeding cowboys, and is extremely overused. I wouldn't mind an appropriation of the font as the title, but to simply download a free font, and apply it as is for a major publication is just absurd to me. Maybe comic people don't care as much as designers, but seeing that font alone would turn me off of buying the thing.

Here is the font if you care to abuse it: http://www.dafont.com/bleeding-cowboys.font

Regarding the "good typographer" comment, absolutely. Because of sites like dafont, and others, fonts are so easy to obtain for specific applications. That being said, they also can become very overused very quickly. In today's print world, I would say that most of the free fonts out there should be tinkered with before applying them. They are free for a reason. They can still work well, but the vast majority of them need to be cleaned up a lot.

Maybe comic people don't care as much as designers, but seeing that font alone would turn me off of buying the thing.

In defense of "comic people," I think the typographical atrocities (not to mention the artwork which is uninspiring quite apart from Ryan's criticisms) in this comic can be chalked up to the fact that it is published by Dynamite Entertainment which has only been around for three years. Even the font used in the word bubbles is quite generic.

Some artists and letterers have designed original fonts just for comics, the most notable being artist Tim Sale (recently of Heroes fame) who uses only his own fonts on his artwork, and Richard Starkings who began as a hand letterer and in 1992 founded the lettering and design studio Comicraft which creates its own fonts for comics books.

Though bad instances of typography can still be found even in the Big Two publishers, to its credit DC contracted Chip Kidd to design all the covers for its "All Star" line of titles since 2005.